JUDGMENT IS NOT AN EXIT: Toward an affective criticism of violence with american psycho1

ANGELAKI journa l of the theoretical hum an itie s volume 6 num ber 3 dece mbe r 20 01 The only true criticism is comparative É because any work in a field is itself imbricated within other fields. Gilles Deleuze, ÒThe Brain is the ScreenÓ 367 I comparison, representation, judgment ary Harron opens her generally wellreceived film adaptation of Bret Easton EllisÕs infamous 1991 novel American Psycho as if she consciously wanted to heed Jean-Luc GodardÕs well-known anti-representational adage, Ònot blood, red,Ó with which he matter-of-factly responded to a Cahiers du Cinema interviewer who suggested that GodardÕs Pierrot Le Fou was banned for children under eighteen because Òthere is a good deal of blood in PierrotÓ (Godard on Godard 217). Against a sterile backdrop of pure white, small red blotches slowly drip down the screen, one by one, without further (contextual) commentary or explanation except for the non-diegetic, eerie violin sounds that accentuate the dripping. Conditioned by numerous horror movies, countless articles on the making of the film, pre-release reviews evaluating HarronÕs adaptation, and, of course, the potential memory evoked by the book itself and the public controversy it spawned, the audience probably expects Harron to cut to the chase right from the outset and show Patrick Bateman Ð psychotic Wall Street broker extraordinaire Ð committing one of his grisly deeds. Given that EllisÕs novel has gained the questionable reputation of being the most scandalously gory American novel of the last decade,2 it makes only sense for Harron to mark from the first scene what the novel is all about: violence. The slow dripping of the red gradually mutates into a slow drizzle, perhaps suggesting a gaping wound waiting off-screen to be revealed by one of the next shots. The audience readies M marco abel JUDGMENT IS NOT AN EXIT toward an affective criticism of violence with american psycho 1 itself for some potentially discomforting images Ð perhaps a close-up of a slain woman with her breasts cut off, a homeless beggar with his eyes gouged out, or a well-dressed yuppie put out of his misery by one swift blow to the head with a designer axe.3 After all, we have seen many horror flicks before, and thus we know that the red we see must be blood! Yet, to our surprise Ð articulated by audible sighs of relief conveyed through chuckling or outright laughter by the audiences with whom I have watched the film Ð the next shot reveals the red running down the white screen as nothing more ghastly than a decorative condiment being drizzled around the circumference of an expensive-looking nouvelle cuisine dessert. What once was blood, now appears to be raspberry sauce! With this wonderfully Godardian opening moment, the film performatively introduces the novelÕs singular asignifying, affective force. Or so ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/01/030137-18 © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd and the Editors of Angelaki DOI: 10.1080/0969725012008799 6 137 toward affective criticism it seems, for almost instantaneously Harron abandons her attempt at rendering cinematically EllisÕs violent text as a question of affects and forces rather than significations and meanings. As sections III and IV of this essay will argue in greater detail, the film substitutes the latter question for the former by extracting and reshaping the novelÕs forces in such a manner that the film quickly turns into a relatively traditional satire Ð in this case of Wall Street capitalism in the 1980s as exemplified by Patrick Bateman, the psychotically violent yuppie protagonist of EllisÕs novel. In cinematically instantiating the critical reception of American Psycho that obsessively judged EllisÕs alleged satirical representation of Reaganomics, HarronÕs film symptomatically embodies the tendency of cultural criticism to conceive of violence as a matter of representation and, in turn, to mark as judgment the inevitable violence it does to a (violent) text.4 Remarkably, HarronÕs film received considerably more praise than scorn, and none of the negative critical responses have even come close to approaching the level of violence launched against EllisÕs novel.5 How, then, can we explain that the film has generally been well received when the textual basis for it has been so widely and forcefully reviled? Why has HarronÕs film adaptation avoided the anger and outrage that Ellis has been fighting off for the last decade? To begin answering these questions, I suggest that we have to understand that one of the filmÕs main effects lies in its indexing the practice of critiquing both Bret Easton EllisÕs novel and (violent) texts in general.6 This indexing occurs, however, precisely because the film deploys (a response to) the critical discourse surrounding the ÒAmerican PsychoÓ event as one of its key narrative engines. What, then, does criticism of violence do? One answer is that it compares. Whether criticism compares themes or styles,7 authors or directors,8 across decades or within a given year Ð criticism compares. And, perhaps most importantly, criticismÕs ultimate interest tends to be a comparison of a different yet related kind: that between the text and the reality it Òrepresents.Ó9 Notwithstanding the interventions of Derrida and Deleuze, one of the most dominant habits of cultural criticism since Plato has been to compare a work of art to reality; further, at least since Plato, this comparison has been inscribed with the tendency to judge the work of art in terms of its truth value.10 The closer art resembles life, the higher its value; the less accurate its representation Ð the more dissimilar the copy is from the original Ð the more questionable its merit. Obviously, it would be oversimplistic to claim that todayÕs critics are exclusively, or at least predominantly, Platonists, and it would be equally problematic to suggest that cultural criticism has not moved beyond Matthew ArnoldÕs practice of moral criticism. However, by diagnosing the discourse spawned by American Psycho, I want to show that the particular style of contemporary engagement with violent cultural texts continues to perpetuate that which has emerged with PlatonismÕs denunciation of simulacra as dangerously inferior artifacts compared to ÒtrueÓ copies: that is, the critical habit to respond to violent art as a matter of representation that inevitably, however subtly, demands a judgment of it. Focusing on the event ÒAmerican Psycho,Ó of course, is not a neutral choice. Rather, I am interested in it precisely because the novel, its critical reception, and the film as part of the latter violently articulate the problematic at hand: the way critical discourse habitually translates the asignifying force of affect into a signifying regime of judgment Ð a regime that consistently questions the value of violence as if we knew what violence in the realm of aesthetics is or can do, but sidesteps the Nietzschean provocation to investigate the value of value itself. Given that criticism is about comparing, the question emerges whether we can imagine ways of comparison that do not rely on or have recourse to the mode of judgment as a crucial component of critical practice. Or, to put a different spin on this question, given the inevitability of violence that criticism does to that which it encounters (that is, any criticism is selective and thus omits, paraphrases and thus changes, translates and thus alters, cuts into the object and thus extracts), is it possible for criticism to mark its violence not immediately as judgment?11 The task, here, is neither to get rid of comparison as 138 abel a critical tool nor to deny the inevitable violence of oneÕs critical practice; rather, it is to ask why this violence tends to be marked as judgment and what the cost of this is, as well as whether we possess alternative tools that might allow us to engage in comparative criticism without accepting its invitation to judge. II “to have done with judgment”: gilles deleuze’s symptomatology What, then, might be the problem with judgment? Considering criticismÕs potential to be something other than critique Ð which, from Kant on, has been the most venerated way of reacting to an (artistic) event Ð Gilles Deleuze provides one answer to this question and, in turn, offers us a way of responding to events without judgment. Evoking Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Artaud, Deleuze argues in ÒTo Have Done with JudgmentÓ that the problem with judgment is a pragmatic one: Judgment prevents the emergence of any new mode of existence. For the latter creates itself through its own forces, that is, through the forces it is able to harness, and is valid in and of itself inasmuch as it brings the new combination into existence. Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. (135) Value has to be produced, not reproduced, but judgment does precisely that: it reproduces value based on a pre-existing (moral) ground, thus perpetuating the same modes of existence rather than helping the new/difference to emerge.12 Deleuze suggests we take more seriously SpinozaÕs claim that we donÕt even know what a body can do. For Deleuze, the crucial question is not how to judge a body but how to find out what else a body is capable of, how a body can exist differently: how else can a body enter relationships with other bodies whose operative engine is affective force Ð with the weight and direction of this force determining the capacity of a body to be affected by and affect other bodies? For 139 Deleuze, whose critical eye always searches for that which has the capacity to produce new lines of flight productive of new modes of existence, it is love and hate Ð forces, affects Ð instead of judgment that provide the impetus for writing critically on literature or film, for diagnosing which responses work and which donÕt. For this essayÕs epigraph (taken from an interview Deleuze gave after the publication of his two volumes on cinema), the previous argument means that DeleuzeÕs interest in comparative criticism is not a question of judging any given term of the comparison as superior or inferior, good or evil. Such a mode of comparison, as this essay will show in the next sections, serves only to perpetuate the status quo. It continues to affirm a given moral ground based on which judgment is passed, thus remaining incapable of inventing a new mode of response or line of flight. Instead, Deleuze engages in comparative criticism because it allows connections to be drawn, linkages to be foregrounded, differences to be articulated Ð in short, it allows for the production of new modes of existence, for becoming-affected otherwise. Perhaps most importantly, comparative criticism as conceived and practiced by Deleuze is capable of diagnosing art in terms of symptoms rather than syndromes. He does not ask what the disease (syndrome) ÒisÓ in order to cure it but investigates the symptomatic forces (in Nietzschean terms, active and reactive forces) that make up the symptom: he asks what symptoms do, how they work, rather than debating whether something is bad or not. Instead of blaming a virus and trying to get rid of it because of what it Òis,Ó for instance, Deleuzean symptomatology diagnoses which forces of the virusÕs make-up can be harnessed productively. The question is always how these forces can be deployed differently. As Paul Patton, one of DeleuzeÕs most lucid commentators, explains: ÒWhile [illness] is clearly a reactive force, its value depends on the nature of the subject and how it responds to the illness which acts upon it. The same physiological state may weaken some powers but also open new possibilities of feeling or bring about new capacities for acting and being acted uponÓ (63). Rather than conflating syndromes with symptoms and thus overlooking toward affective criticism the way illness is always multiple, symptomatology harnesses the varying forces immanent to modes of existence as a way into human relationships Ð into multiplicity. Hence, symptomatology fights and experiments with the multiplicity of forces immanent to something like violence not because of some moral understanding of what the syndrome Òis,Ó but because of what the symptoms ÒdoÓ Ð i.e., because of their effects. Put differently, comparison is always a sort of classification, something Deleuze was particularly fond of throughout his life. He argues that a Òclassification always involves bringing together things with very different appearances and separating those that are very similar É A classification is always a symptomatologyÓ (ÒThe BrainÓ 368). DeleuzeÕs use of symptoms, however, ought not to be confused with hermeneutic psychoanalytic practices where symptoms are ultimately something to be uncovered and cured.13 Rather, symptomatology diagnoses the differences between objects in order to emphasize the differences without eradicating them, without reducing them to some prior original identity. Further, it describes these differences as being produced on the same plane of immanence Ð that is, the differences between objects result from the same field of surface forces at work in the same culturalÐhistorical matrix. To compare something with something else, therefore, is always a matter of diagnosing one object through the other, as a response to it, in an attempt to describe what the differences are, where they come from, what their intensities are, and what they suggest about the forces that have produced the difference. Immanence, as Alain Badiou puts it, Òrequires that you place yourself where thought has already started, as close as possible to a singular case and to the movement of thoughtÓ (14). Hence, immanent criticism does not desire an (unattainable and thus always lacking) outside from which to judge safely the morality of the event. Commenting on the political and ethical inefficacy of cultural and political criticismÕs desire for an outside, prominent Marxist cultural theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri concur with DeleuzeÕs philosophy of immanence and contend that Ò[w]e should be done once and for all with the search for an outside, a standpoint that imagines a purity for our politics. It is better both theoretically and practically to enter the terrain É and confront its homogenizing and heterogenizing flows in all their complexity, grounding our analysis in the power of the É multitudeÓ (Empire 46). In other words, the only way out is through! Taking the basic terms of symptomatological comparative criticism Ð affect, immanence, and anti-judgment Ð as the arrow of thought to be caught and redirected, letÕs turn to the comparison at hand: feminist director Mary HarronÕs cinematic response to EllisÕs much-loathed American Psycho. Responding to both DeleuzeÕs attitude towards comparative criticism and the objects of comparison, I want to diagnose the differences between the novel and its movie adaptation as symptoms of the larger discourse that the novel has produced and, in turn, been affected by since the prepublication of selected passages of EllisÕs text in Time and Spy that introduced the public to the novelÕs title character, Patrick Bateman, as he engages in extreme acts of violence.14 By engaging HarronÕs film as a response to the event known as ÒAmerican PsychoÓ Ð that is, to the novel and its discursive history Ð I ultimately conceive of the rest of this article as an attempt at articulating what it costs critical discourse consistently to read EllisÕs novel representationally Ð that is, as a satire of the immoral materialist excesses of Reaganomics Ð or, as Gavin Smith puts it in his review, as Òa mordantly funny and agreeably blatant satire with genuine subversive biteÓ (72). More specifically, in the following I want to examine what it costs us in terms of our capacity to respond to a violently boring as well as boringly violent text such as American Psycho when critical discourse continues to affirm Ð indeed celebrate Ð HarronÕs decision to remove the novelÕs Òexcess fat in a kind of cinematic liposuctionÓ (Holden B1), thus eradicating almost all of the novelÕs compositional cornerstones (repetition, boredom, and violence) in order to repeat the critical order-word ÒsatireÓ that has dominated the popular and critical reception of EllisÕs novel from the very beginning.15 I want to foreground what happens with a type of criticism that 140 abel Òcontinually relies on and returns to older aesthetic categories [such as satire], even in its engagement with radically different forms of cultural productionÓ (Ngai 16) Ð namely, that it remains incapable of heeding the Òcall for new terms for describing our responses to innovative works, new directions to be used in the work of critically commenting on themÓ (Ngai 16). In other words, while I will specifically compare admittedly selective moments from EllisÕs novel and HarronÕs film adaptation, I am not so much interested in simply asserting that these two texts are different, let alone that one is better than the other. Precisely because the question raised by violence is not whether it is good or bad, but what it does, I instead want to examine what the textsÕ differences consist of, from what practices these differences emerge, and why the differences indeed make a difference for both our capacity to respond to American Psycho and the practice of cultural criticism (of violence) at large. III critical judgments: harron’s film as a response From the beginning, critics have concentrated on three related questions about EllisÕs novel: whether the textÕs violence is immoral or not; whether American Psycho is a successful, good satire or not; and whether the incessant repetitiveness and flatness of the bookÕs prose indicates a satirical purpose or mere lack of authorial skill. Those who condemn the novel as immoral consistently reject its satirical component and deny Ellis any skill whatsoever;16 those who are willing to entertain that the novel might have a moral purpose attempt to rescue the novel from its detractors by making as good of a case as possible for the textÕs satirical intentions and effects.17 CriticsÕ attitude toward EllisÕs style, in turn, tends to be determined by how they judge the overall effect of the novel: those who judge it as conservative reject his style as skill-less; those who judge the novel as a more or less good satire think of the style as at least not entirely pointless.18 Regardless of the outcome of the criticsÕ judgment, however, the novelÕs violence itself is never conceptualized; it never constitutes the focus for response in and of itself. Indicative of 141 the general difficulties surfacing when critical discourse encounters the issue of violence, the reception of American Psycho always configures the novelÕs violence as allegorical or metaphorical, as being about something other than violence itself Ð and the success of the representational status of violence determines the critical judgment of it. In other words, the critical violence done to EllisÕs text Ð itself further highlighted by the passionate, often vitriolic rhetoric deployed by the critics Ð marks itself in terms of Òjudgment,Ó as being concerned with whether violence is good or bad, rather than with what it does. Now, this critical violence done to the novel Ð one which consistently marks itself as ÒjudgmentÓ Ð does not so much constitute a problem because any of these critics are ÒwrongÓ; rather, it raises the more interesting questions of what judgment does, of what its effects are. Among the many effects this specific critical judgment had, one of the most remarkable was to have established the conditions of possibility for future responses to EllisÕs American Psycho Ð in this case Mary HarronÕs film. In other words, Harron hardly could ignore the vicious and well-publicized character of the critical response to EllisÕs novel, for the specificities of the receptionÕs terms constituted the discursive formation by which any articulation of future responses was bound. 19 Whatever her personal response to EllisÕs text might have been, by the time of shooting her film, HarronÕs response was inevitably bound to be a response to Ellis through the critical response that circulated in the public for the last decade. Given the frequent attacks on the novel as dangerously immoral garbage, HarronÕs possibilities for responding to the text without immediately setting herself up for the same kind of response that Ellis received were limited. To avoid the potential critical outrage looming at the horizon, Harron was essentially forced to respond to the critical discourse by amplifying the element that was thought to be the sole redeeming factor of EllisÕs violent novel: namely, its satire.20 By magnifying the novelÕs satirical aspects, Harron emphasizes that EllisÕs violent novel really represents a critique of the social rather than constituting a mindless glorification of violence, as has frequently been alleged.21 toward affective criticism From this symptomatological perspective on the event ÒAmerican Psycho,Ó then, it does not come as a surprise that the film embodies the critical debate that preceded it. The film does indeed mark its main interest in satirizing the shallowness and cruelty of 1980s American capitalism, a fact almost unanimously attested to by the filmÕs critical reception.22 Without question, according to the film, EllisÕs novel negatively judges its representation of Wall Street America; in turn, the film positively judges what it perceives to be the novelÕs satirical representation and does its best to clarify this purpose. The novelÕs violence, in all of this, functions merely as a metaphor for capitalismÕs cannibalistic cruelty Ð one that can be accepted precisely because it merely allegorizes the larger point of the novel. Four relatively brief examples suffice to illustrate exactly how the film modifies the novel in order to amplify and elucidate its satirical Ð and thus representational Ð quality. First, Harron splices different scenes from the book together as a means of clarifying BatemanÕs motivation and psychology. She thus neutralizes the possibility for a recurrence of one argument levied against Ellis, namely that he failed to provide any insight into why a human being might be inclined to such extreme violence.23 Second, Harron adds two scenes not from the book itself in order to make the otherwise dormant detective story of EllisÕs text seem much more crucial.24 Magnifying the detective element provides the film with precisely that which the book lacked to the angry dismay of many critics: a plot. In addition to lessening the likelihood for criticsÕ complaints that the filmÕs violence might be purely sensationalist and gratuitous (familiar charges against EllisÕs Òplotless blankÓ), the emphasis on the detective plot also encourages the audience to focus on the question of whether or not the violence we see on screen really transpired. The audience itself turns into detectives, desiring to discern between events that truly occurred and those that constitute mere fantasies of the protagonist.25 Third, Harron allows actor Christian Bale to put on a rather affected performance of Patrick Bateman that clearly draws the American psycho as one of the most ludicrous ÒmonsterÓ characters in film history. Confronted with this version of Bateman, the audience can feel superior and thus is likely to remain uninterested in identifying itself with him. In other words, the film helps the viewer to maintain a distance to the character, which allows him more easily to sneer at the ridiculousness of both Bateman as a character and the world he appears to represent. In contrast, the novel has often been criticized for sadistically luring the reader into sympathizing with Bateman only to betray and punish him by overwhelming him with descriptive onslaughts of extreme violence. Finally, Harron downplays the explicitness of the novelÕs intense violence by turning it into a rather comforting, since familiar, slapstick-like violence that is easily recognizable to the audience from, say, the Scream trilogy. Violence in HarronÕs film is, by and large, a matter of laughter, albeit at times uneasy laughter, whereas in the novel, to many criticsÕ consternation, the violence inspired nothing but pure incomprehension. In short, all of these stylistic devices serve Harron to take the wind out of those criticsÕ sails who might otherwise have been inclined to crush her film for the same reasons that they lambasted EllisÕs book. Crucially, Harron succeeds at this task precisely by transforming the critical discourse on the book into the engine for the production and structuring of her cinematic images. Spending any more time than I have already on mapping out the satirical trajectory of HarronÕs film would go against the point of this essay: namely, that HarronÕs film is a symptomatic effect of the novel and its reception, an effect that has already manifested itself rather obviously in the filmÕs reviews. The fact is, HarronÕs film constitutes a response to EllisÕs novel that has solicited a critical reception almost completely the reverse of that provoked by the original text: to wit, critical discourse affirms her satirical strategies and praises her decisions to alter the novel so that just about everything offensive about it has disappeared. Here, I just want to demarcate the cost involved in allowing the order-word ÒsatireÓ Ð which tends to be merely another name for the even older orderword ÒtruthÓ and the regime of representation 142 abel within which it functions Ð to dominate oneÕs (institutionalized) response to a text such as EllisÕs. After all, what do we know once we have determined that the novel is satirical? What do we know about the force of the text Ð the force of language and images as such Ð once we know that American Psycho is an (un)successful satire? What exactly do we know about even sympathetic readersÕ extreme difficulty in dealing with the novel once we have endlessly repeated and obeyed the order to confine the text to the level of satire? What precisely do we know about the obsession that effectuated and affected the writing of the text and, in turn, the reading of it once we have concluded that the text was meant to be satirical, or once we have decided whether Bateman did the deeds or not (even if we decide that we cannot decide)? And, finally, what do we know about that which upsets so many readers of American Psycho Ð the Òexcessive,Ó unexplained, ÒincomprehensibleÓ violence Ð once we agree that the novel satirizes the capitalist excesses of the past? We have to ask ourselves, therefore, what other effects HarronÕs strategic modifications of EllisÕs novel (might have) had: what does HarronÕs strategy and its wholehearted embrace by critical discourse cost us with regard to our capacity to respond not only to EllisÕs extremely violent text but also to violent art in general? To find some answers, let us examine HarronÕs handling of what arguably constitutes the novelÕs most important dynamic: the interaction between its boringly slow passages of endlessly repeated details of BatemanÕs life and the speeded-up interruptions of violent outbursts. IV the boredom of violence, the violence of boredom: a question of speed The main difference between HarronÕs film and EllisÕs book is marked by the extent boredom is deployed as a major stylistic strategy. Remember that one of the most annoying parts of American Psycho is the endless repetition of brand names, work-out routines, restaurant menus, clothing advice, television programs, music criticism, misogynist comments, or non-sequitur chitchat. 143 Arguably, what happens in reading the novel is that (faithful or, perhaps better, patient) readers become bored by EllisÕs narrative Ð despite its occasional undeniable humor Ð and eventually begin to long for some action. (Remember, too, that the first scene of graphic violence does not even occur before about one third into the book.) The action, of course, arrives Ð as a surprise to those readers who paid little attention to a number of hints indicating that something may be amiss with Bateman and, perhaps, less surprising to those who have put those hints together and at the very least were aware of BatemanÕs penchant for violent actions. But, as shocking as the torturing of a homeless man and his dog surely is, it is only the gradual increase in repetition of exceedingly brutal mutilations of business acquaintances and former or current sex-partners that through a speeded-up cumulative effect begins to affect the readers in such a manner that they find themselves in a position that they have not occupied before, that they have not desired Ð a position that calls for a response for which, evidently, the ÒtoolsÓ are not (yet) immediately available. Hence, as evinced by the bookÕs reception, most readers sooner or later begin to long precisely for that from which they have wanted to escape: the boring itineration of consumer goods, shallow observations, and senseless activities. In other words, EllisÕs abandonment of any pretense to characterization, psychology, or motivation paradoxically lures readers into longing for the very violence Ellis does to English prose. Readers prefer the affective quality of prosaic, though often comical, boredom to that of heightened graphic aggression, yet it is of course the exposure to the former that affects and effectuates the response to the latter. Clearly, then, the repulsiveness of the text decidedly exists on both levels, as evidenced by the forcefulness of the critical responses to it: that of the actual physical violence committed by Bateman and that of the prose itself. What readers discover is that, in the end, there indeed exists Òno exitÓ (American Psycho 399), no way out from the endless onslaught of the different but resonating affective registers of violence. Contrary to the novel, the filmÕs emphasis on the ÒrealnessÓ of BatemanÕs actions Ð heightened toward affective criticism by its explicit reliance on detection as a main plotting device Ð provides the audience with an exit by translating the question of violence and affect into that of truth and representation, without ever hinting that truth itself is a product and practice of violence as well. However, it is hard to believe that readers struggling just to get through the novel are all that concerned with the question of whether or not Bateman actually committed the violent deeds. If nothing else, this question Ð the question of truth Ð arrives afterwards, but whatever arrives then has already been affected and effectuated by the affective encounter with the style and content of the narrative. To hate or to love as a response occurs prior to the analytic mode, prior to the potential concern with questions about truth. That the question of truth, satire, or representation indeed arrives, almost inevitably, speaks more to the institutional power to order and train readers in ÒadequateÓ or ÒmoralÓ reading habits rather than to what the book itself does. Yet asking representational questions (which, as Deleuze has compellingly shown throughout his work, are always second-order events, since any representation must be produced and is inevitably the outcome of prior forces encountering each other)26 constitutes perhaps the main mechanism by which criticism has held at bay questions of affect, of asignification. But since it is impossible to reject ad hoc, and thus claim a stance outside of, representational language, it is only by going through this diagram of reading (ÒrepresentationÓ) that critical language has any chance of providing readers with new tools to encounter a book such as American Psycho.27 Whatever these tools will be, for them to be different from the existing ones they would have to allow the affective quality of language or images invented by texts such as American Psycho to subsist without reducing them to the level of any other text. Instead of eradicating that which is different about the intensity of the affective component inherent to these texts, critical language would have to affirm affect as a means of articulating the new modes of existence invented in and by these artistic practices. Perhaps David Byrne and the Talking Heads were right in provoking us to ÒStop Making Sense.Ó The problematic of violence simply cannot be ÒresolvedÓ by ascribing meaning to something that, as Nealon argues vis-ˆ-vis the unspeakable violent horror of Auschwitz, Òis an irreducible event É that cannot be reassuringly reduced to a logic that can be said to have brought it aboutÓ (77Ð78). Violence, in this sense, is not to be Òunderstood,Ó or reduced to theories of signification. DeleuzeÕs symptomatology, therefore, emerges as a valuable tool for analysis because it productively cuts into what Brian Massumi astutely locates as the central problem of cultural discourse today: namely, Òthat there is no culturalÐtheoretical vocabulary specific to affectÓ (221). So, it is precisely the novelÕs excess of violence that overwhelms, frustrates, annoys, upsets, and even sickens; it is this (literal) overkill that provokes readers to throw away the book, to tear it apart, to spit at it Ð and, potentially, to talk or write about it. In other words, if nothing else, the value of the book is that it forces its audience to encounter the undeniably visceral response they have. The novel solicits a pure affective response from the audience, even though most critics who wrote about it have been unwilling or perhaps incapable of acknowledging this, thus ironically emulating all those characters populating American Psycho who have proven to be incapable of seeing that their boy next door is also the killer from hell. After all, how does one write about affect Ð asignifying forces Ð if one has been trained to respond to literature Ð and film Ð on the level of representation, meaning, and truth? How does one respond affectively when one of the most insistent sets of order-words has commanded us to care about whether or not a work of art accomplishes goals that are valued by critics or society, whatever that may entail? EllisÕs American Psycho creates its affect-overload through a careful juxtaposition of slowness and speed, of endless repetition of items and repetitive scenes of gore. Both repetitions, however, deploy the same clinical flatness of tone, which suggests not only their affective affinities but also that affect is not so much a result of ÒdepthÓ (the often-evoked narrative ÒvoiceÓ) but of speed differentials, of the accumulating processes of narrative structures, itiner- 144 abel ations of events, and encounters with the flow of the narrative at large. Morning, HarryÕs, Pastels, Tunnel, Office, Health Club, Date, Dry Cleaners, HarryÕs, Deck Chairs, Business Meeting, Video Store, Facial, Date, Tuesday Ð on the very surface level of the chaptersÕ titles, both the mundane repetitiveness and the singularity of the novelÕs events are marked to the effect that the reading of the book moves at times painfully slowly. Slowness is the novelÕs dominant mode of speed. Consequently, the reading process is violently interrupted Ð despite the occasional hint at BatemanÕs previous outbursts of violence Ð when Tuesday arrives, almost out of nowhere, and the reader is confronted with the first scene of graphic violence. Sneaked into this structure is a certain amount of humor, of comedic moments that provoke laughter Ð nervous laughter Ð which only accentuates the effects the clinically precise descriptions of torture have on the reader Ð descriptions that sound as flat or devoid of ÒvoiceÓ as the rest of the novel, thus once again repeating or serializing specific effects rather than satirically commenting upon the violence as such. Nowhere, I think, does the question of truth emerge, the question of whether the 1980s were really like this, or whether Bateman actually commits or merely imagines his terrifying deeds. Or at least one hardly worries about these questions Ð precisely because what one has to deal with first and foremost is the delirium-inducing affective component of the book, with the fact that the speed of the book configures the readerÕs body as assailed, as attacked by an onslaught of different forms of violence. Readers are more likely to deal with getting sick of the book Ð literally Ð than with contemplating its representational quality. The opposite occurs in HarronÕs adaptation. Arguably, the first minutes leading up to the first scene of explicit violence Ð BatemanÕs killing of a homeless black man and his dog Ð are able to create effects similar to the book. Harron strings together a series of comedic events: serious-looking waiters enumerating dinner menus; Bateman partying dressed in power suits; BatemanÕs obsessive cleansing routine; his vapid office routine; his shallow interaction with his fiancŽe; his love for cash machines; his troubles with the suspi- 145 cious dry cleaner; his inability to get a table at Dorsia, his restaurant du jour; his sweating over other yuppiesÕ better-looking business cards; and BatemanÕs lecture on the state of the nation, consisting of a seemingly comprehensive string of catch phrases used by politicians on the campaign trail. All of this is quite funny. Then, somewhat out of nowhere, Bateman passes a homeless person. He stops, cynically teases him with a twenty-dollar bill, and then stabs him to death. At this moment, most of the audiences with whom I watched the film go audibly quiet, sensing that they have been tricked by the preceding repetition of agreeable though mundane comedy. The violence on the screen seems now to affect our response not only to that scene but also to the humorous moments before. Perhaps we feel betrayed by the narrative strategy, perhaps not, but itÕs clear that the film manages to solicit a rather visceral response at this stage. However, whereas this sequence of scenes works well, the rest of the film does not Ð if the idea was to tap into the affective force of EllisÕs novel. HarronÕs strategy was to condense the repetition of the book so that she can get it out of the way, not having her narrative weighed down by the repetition of the novel. As Harron tellingly comments on her technical problems to render the book cinematically, ÒI had to kind of give it more the faade of a plotÓ (Interview). Hence, in the first twenty minutes we essentially get the book in a nutshell. Harron speeds up precisely that which is all about slowness in the book in order to get on with her goal: to create a swiftly moving satire. This front-loading of the repetition prevents her from ever retuning to it, thus she never slows down the narrative so that no affects emerge other than those solicited by standard Hollywood narratives in which chases and cheap thrills are the highpoint of affective production. Further, the violent scenes in the film themselves become predictable as they are never set up again as a surprise moment. Now we just move from one scene of violence to the next, evenly paced, whether it is a scene merely suggested or actually shown. Finally, the film tames the affective force of violence through a twofold trick. One, it turns toward affective criticism the violence into slapstick. (Bateman, naked, with a running chainsaw, chasing a prostitute through the staircase of his upper-East-side apartment home must constitute one of the weirdest images of the film. Yet, one senses that this sceneÕs over-the-top-ness might actually provide a key to a different, affective cinematic response to the novel. Perhaps the film is not slapstick enough!) And two, the film renders identical the novelÕs radically different affective series of music criticism and violence. The book carefully juxtaposes the music criticism chapters not only to the violent chapters but to all other events in the book, thus severing the music chapters from the plot, casting them as pure interruption, as narrative breakdowns, as a form of narrative violence, dramatizing that narration works by breakdowns Ð by violence. By contrast, the film has Bateman rhapsodize about Genesis, Whitney Huston, and Huey Lewis and the News as a prelude to Ð indeed almost simultaneous with Ð his torturing of his victims, thus eradicating precisely that which gives rise to the specific affective encounters provoked by the reading of the novel: do we feel more sickened by BatemanÕs assessment of the music or by his outrageously violent torture devices? And what does the answer to this question say about the reader? The filmÕs strategy of having Bale read parts of the music chapters as farcical lead-ins to the ensuing violence Ð absurdly suggesting that the badness of the music almost inevitably leads to violence Ð not only turns different series of events that intersect with each other into one and the same moment; it also results in the audience mostly laughing at the combination of ludicrous music criticism and slapstick violence. (BaleÕs decision to perform a funny dance while pronouncing the greatness of Huey LewisÕs ÒHip to Be SquareÓ merely accentuates the absurdity of the scene.) The fact that Harron sets all killings of prostitutes and acquaintances to BatemanÕs music lectures merely heightens the comedy, thus turning the potential for revolting affects into one of comforting humor.28 The film is evenly paced, with very few ups and downs. Indeed, it is oddly boring. But this boredom is of a different kind than the one produced by EllisÕs novel. Whereas the latter is upsetting precisely because we have no capacity to respond to it in any meaningful or comforting way Ð because Ellis insists that boredom works as boredom only when disrupted by violence, and vice versa, that is, that the two series exist parallel to, and yet affect, each other as well Ð the former is reassuring because we are led to respond to the satirical component (critique, logos) rather than to the implicating one (affect). Ultimately, then, we can enjoy the film for its humor, its ridiculing of its characters and their world, and all the while remain convinced that we are living in a better world, that we have progressed, and that we are neither the perpetrators nor the victims of violence in any form. Hence, one might say that the movie is not boring enough. For if it had been boring in the sense of the novel, we would be forced to come to terms with the affects created by this boredom Ð with the potential to face violence qua violence rather than as a mediated form of satirical critique Ð regardless of whether or not the medium of film possesses a more immediate affective quality than literature. But that the film is perhaps not boring enough is not so much a lack inherent to the film or an expression of a desire for the film to ÒrepresentÓ more accurately. (Affect is a matter of doing, not signification!) Rather, the diminished level of boredom present in the film constitutes HarronÕs symptomatic cinematic response to the critical discourse on American Psycho, for one of the two main complaints against the novel was precisely that it was too boring and thus could not sustain the readerÕs interest. (It was, of course, also the perception that the novelÕs boredom accentuates the novelÕs violence that, in turn, formed the basis for the most violent reactions to EllisÕs text.) The agreeable pace of the film caters to our existing capacity to read or watch Ð react to Ð a text. It furthers that which we are trained in throughout high school and college, through film (and literary) criticism, academic and popular alike, as well as through an endless exposure to Hollywood narratives that thrive on at times outrageous but mostly tame solicitations of affective viewer responses. In the process of ÒhumanizingÓ EllisÕs work along the lines configured by the critical language used in response to his novel Ð that is, 146 abel by creating a way out that depends on the individual, fully psychologized, truthful human agent Ð everything that the novel is almost too self-evidently about is eliminated: affect. In the novel, affect is configured and produced by the textÕs simultaneous potential for boring and horrifying its readers, a potential that the novel achieves precisely because it proves that horror and boredom are not contradictory terms but instead exist as affects next to each other on the same plane of immanence, mutually producing and thus modifying each other. Boredom violates expectations, standards, bodies; and violence, in turn, is boring. (Note that the clinical rendering of it in American Psycho merely repeats the same violent scene with the similarly repeated addition of some extra spice. Harron Ð maybe out of recognition of the violent scenesÕ inherent boredom that nonetheless so forcefully affects readers Ð resists this narrative strategy by ÒslapstickingÓ all but the first violent scene.) Clearly, the same abstract machine produces both forms of violence Ð and their differences can only be determined in their effects, not in their intrinsic meaningfulness. The simultaneity, even indiscernibility, of shock and boredom so obviously missing from HarronÕs response to EllisÕs text, affects our capacity to respond. As Ngai writes in a different context, the Òsudden excitation of Ôshock,Õ and the desensitizing we associate with Ôboredom,Õ though diametrically opposed and seemingly mutually exclusive, are both responses that confront us with the limitations of our capacity for responding in generalÓ (10). HarronÕs representational reading of EllisÕs novel turns a text that so obviously has affected readers on a visceral level through its alternating speeds Ð the boring slowness of the endless lists, etc., and the fast-paced action of the often surprising violence Ð into a text that wants its audience to have a mostly cerebral response that is encouraged precisely by a rather even-keeled, predictable narrative pace that has rid itself of the novelÕs differentiating engine: repetition and violence. Like the critical reception that preceded it, the film focuses on what the book allegedly means (a critique of the capitalist excesses of the 1980s) and thus somehow never gets around to articulating what the book does: namely, that it 147 produces readers incapable of responding to the textÕs affective force. To put the last point in Nietzschean terms, the novel produces untimely readers, readers who are yet-to-come, who are of the future that must be produced, readers who first have to develop the capacity to be affected without desiring to turn their affective response immediately into a question of logos, understanding, rationality, and representation. The film explains, delimits, and justifies to the audience the few moments it affords them of truly affective encounters with the images in front of them. It coerces them to respond judgmentally rather than affectively. HarronÕs film, thus, is symptomatic of the common critical practice to pass judgment based on the representational quality of images and words. It solicits responses that reproduce the very regime of pedagogical discipline that has instilled in audiences the tendency to read and view texts representationally. Consequently, the film, as a continuation Ð indeed, an instantiation Ð of the critical discourse on EllisÕs novel, eradicates those forces of the novel that have the capacity for producing difference, that which is unknown. But, as Deleuze argues about the possibility of and for writing, ÒHow else can one write but of those things which one doesnÕt know, or knows badly? It is precisely there that we imagine having something to say. We write only at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which separates our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one into the otherÓ (Difference and Repetition xxi). It seems to me that violence is precisely such a frontier. Although we claim that we know violence when we see it, violence has remained one of the great incomprehensible events of life Ð even more so in light of the fact that countless explanatory apparatuses have been mobilized to explain its causes. Hence, pace just about all responses to EllisÕs novel, including HarronÕs, American PsychoÕs value appears to be precisely in presenting us with a practice of writing at this frontier, in experimenting with that which is ÒunknownÓ to us. (And this value might very well not have emerged as forcefully had it not been for HarronÕs film and the differences it symptomatically indexes.) In refusing to provide toward affective criticism a pre-made explanation, the novel invents a new, albeit horrifying, knowledge, one that doesnÕt make sense of the frontier but inhabits it without reducing it to something other than what it is: the ultimate Other. Responding to the Other (violence) as Other, as that which does not signify anything, as that which can be encountered merely through its forces that produce specific affective effects, however, would require criticism to heed DeleuzeÕs encouragement to defer judgment, to do away with it: ÒAffect as immanent evaluation, instead of judgment as transcendent value: ÔI love or I hateÕ instead of ÔI judgeÕÓ (Cinema 2 141). V representation(al) costs ThereÕs an argument to be made that American Psycho [the film] should be funnier, wilder, bloodier, druggier Ð and IÕm not a fan of the voice over (itÕs always too explicit). Bret Easton Ellis, ÒView to a KillerÓ 123 Symptomatologically comparing the novel, its critical reception, and the film as part of the latter is not a matter of whoÕs right or wrong, of whose reading is better or worse. Instead, it emphasizes that HarronÕs cinematic response to EllisÕs novel is symptomatic of the critical discourse American Psycho has solicited and articulates what it costs critical discourse Ð including the film Ð to render the book as a (successful) satirical representation of the 1980s. Again, what do we know once we have decided? Not much other than that we have found traditional, long-established critical patterns Ð dare I say clichŽs Ð that allow us either to rescue a seemingly unrescuable text for ÒprogressiveÓ political purposes (ÒLook, man, the Õ80s were really bad!Ó) or, using a clichŽ on my own, to dump it for good into the dustbin of literary history where it should rot away with similar immoral (conservative or not) trash. In other words, what is finally problematic with the critical violence Ð including the filmÕs Ð done to Bret Easton EllisÕs novel is not the critical violence exerted (as if it could be otherwise) but what it does: namely, that this violence is ultimately reassuring and comforting in that it makes American PsychoÕs violence recognizable in a familiar critical and ethical register. It would be pointless to deride this as a ÒbadÓ thing. Rather, this particular critical violence symptomatically marks an interesting domesticating response to violence, one that indicates that regardless of the supposed proliferation and amplification of violent images in contemporary American culture it is not so much violence as such but the state of not knowing what violence is that constitutes the experience of horror. And, as it turns out, affect Ð sets of forces that critical language has not yet been able to encounter on its own terms without reducing them to the more familiar discourse of representation and judgment Ð is the proper name for that which largely remains unknown. What the critical responses to American Psycho symptomatically cost us, then, is our capacity to experiment with, and articulate something about, affect in regard to a text so clearly productive of affective responses. Criticism will continue to Other the capacity and knowledges provided by and immanent to affect as long as it persists to rely almost exclusively on an Enlightenment discourse of rationality, understanding, logos, and judgment (the possibility of which depends on a clear-cut distinction between a subjectÕs pre-existing point of view and the perceived object). By perpetuating the order-word representation (a syndrome), criticism continues to ignore that representations are made up of forces (symptoms), just as subjects are constituted by their points of view rather than the other way around.29 Cultural criticism must heed these surface forces if it wants to explain anything about language or images. Any political project formulated in response to occurrences of violence in film or literature that might be interested in the question of resistance or subversion is, I think, trapped as soon as it focuses on the question of representation and judgment. It has no tools to account for the emergence of representations and is thus bound to ignore that representations are simply not ÒaboutÓ representations but always about forces Ð about doing, not meaning. Judgment Ð a critical practice immanent to the concept of representation in that the latter conceives of signs as re-productive and thus encourages a judgment of them in terms of their more or less accurate 148 abel resemblance to reality and truth (the twin pillars for our conception of morality) Ð turns out to be part of the problem, not the solution. A critical insistence on the superiority of the film costs us a lot: namely, a serious attempt to provoke questions about affect, to think about what affect can tell us about art, to ponder what happens to the alleged rarity of resistance once we give affect a bit more credit. To paraphrase Deleuze, once we focus on affect, the question is no more how we can resist (answer: by critique) but how we can tap into the affective forces Ð lines of flight Ð that constitute the social.30 The social is always already in flight, according to Deleuze and Guattari; if fleeing constitutes an immanent component of the social, then so does affect, as fleeing is a form of affect. Hence, the political and pedagogical question to ask Ð one which, I think, EllisÕs novel provokes but which perhaps could be articulated only through HarronÕs cinematic response Ð is how we can become capable of becoming-affected by forces without immediately turning their affect into a critical discourse of logos. Masochism and its economy of boredom and contractual violence might have to say some interesting things in response, but that is a different essay to be written. In terms of cinema, we might want to think about how film Ð as one of the more privileged affect-producing machines thanks to the viscerally immediate quality of visuality Ð could teach us how to respond on the level of affect to a text such as American Psycho. popular press assessments merely recall the brutality of the tone that has been levied against Ellis’s novel throughout the 1990s – not only in popular publications but also in academic articles, most notably in Baxter and Craft’s essay with the telling title, “There are Better Ways of Taking Care of Bret Easton Ellis than Just Censoring Him.” 3 All of these images are taken from Ellis’s novel. 4 Texts dealing with the question of violence in film and literature are far too numerous to be listed here. For some of the more recent major studies that approach violence as a matter of representation, see Scharrett, Slocum, Stein, and Kowalewski. 5 Even when the film is reviewed unfavorably, it is still seen as an improvement over the book. In fact, those who consider the film a failure blame the book for it. For instance, Tony Rayns claims in Sight and Sound that “the film doesn’t work” but nonetheless argues that, “against the odds, Mary Harron and Guinivere Turner have succeeded in extracting a viable narrative screenplay from this plotless blank … they have sensibly junked a huge amount” (42). For other critical assessments that favor the movie over the novel, see Smith, Holden, Gleiberman, and Lane. 6 Taking seriously this suggestion results in an important methodological consequence for this essay: namely, that it does not provide a sustained interpretation of either the novel or the film. This essay is not interested in uncovering the meaning of either text but rather in mapping out the relationship between them as it manifests itself on and through the surface level of critical practices/discourse. 7 See Kowalewski. notes 1 In addition to Angelaki’s anonymous reviewers of this essay, I would like to thank Kathryn Hume, John Muckelbauer, Jeffrey Nealon, Richard Doyle, Evan Watkins, Steven Schneider, and Christine Harold for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. 2 For example, Dennis Harvey calls Ellis’s novel “arguably one of the most loathed and least read novels in recent memory”; likewise, Kristen Baldwin describes Ellis’s text as “one of the most shockingly violent novels ever published … the most reviled book of the decade” (36). These two 149 8 See Frohock on authors as well as Stein and Kinder on directors. 9 See Scharrett’s anthology of critical essays for the best instantiations of this practice, as well as Guerrero, Frus, and Swanson Goldberg’s essays in Slocum’s collection. 10 My argument here and below relies on Gilles Deleuze’s essay “The Simulacrum and Ancient Philosophy,” in which he diagnoses Platonism’s denigration of the simulacrum and its effectuation of a history of representation and judgment based on a metaphysical foundation. Whereas Deleuze toward affective criticism affirms Nietzsche’s call for the overturning of Platonism as the quintessential task of modern philosophy, my essay might be thought of as working towards an overturning of representationalism in modern criticism. 11 Both Derrida (in, for instance, Of Grammatology) and Blanchot (The Infinite Conversation) show how language – writing and speaking, respectively – is an act of violence. The act of criticism, in this sense, has no choice but to be violent. 12 At its limits, this argument suggests that judgment perpetuates the primacy of identity/the same to which difference is merely a secondary category. See Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition for the most compelling refutation of this ontological assumption. 13 Of course, not all psychoanalysis is hung up on uncovering symptoms. For example, Slavoj ZÏ izÏ ek proposes for psychoanalysis to focus on the fetish rather than symptoms because today “ideology functions in a way that is much closer to the notion of [the former]” (8). His notion of symptom, however, differs from Deleuze’s. 14 All too often, critics argue that Harron’s film captures the essence of Ellis’s novel but is better because it condenses the excesses of the book. It is against this eradication of difference between two works of artistic production – the elision of specificity in favor of ultimately collapsing the two texts into one – that I want to deploy Deleuze’s concept of “symptomatology,” first introduced in Masochism: “Symptomatology is always a question of art” and is offered against dialectical sublimation in order to foster “a critical and clinical appraisal able to reveal the truly differential mechanisms as well as the artistic originalities” (14). 15 The debate originated in popular reviews of the novel. For one of the very few examples that argue Ellis succeeds at satirizing the 1980s, see Weldon. For some of the many examples arguing Ellis’s satire fails due to his lack of talent, see Stiles, Rosenblatt, Lehmann-Haupt, Archer, Plagens, Teachout, and, most ingeniously, Mailer and Udovitch. For the best account of the public response to Ellis’s novel, see Eberly. Academic discourse, with the usual time-lapse, continued this discussion. For instance, Young asserts that the novel is indeed a satire but reads it ultimately as an affirmation of conservative moral values. Likewise, Annesley claims that Ellis’s failure to consider that his representation of American capitalism might be inaccurate undermines the success of his satire. For a more positive take on Ellis’s endeavor, see Kauffman, Price, Hume, and feminist critic Carla Freccero who warrants the most interesting defense of the novel. 16 Three responses suffice to exemplify this type of reaction. Christopher Hudson argues: “If there had been some anguished purpose behind [the novel’s] obscenities – for instance, to reflect upon man or his society in extremis – they might, just possibly, have been defensible. American Psycho appears to be empty of any purpose whatsoever, other than to get its author back in the news after the critical and commercial failure of his second novel, Rules of Attraction” (quoted in Lebeau 127). Terry Teachout concurs: “It’s ineptly written. It’s sophomoric. It is, in the truest sense of the word, obscene” (45). And, most infamously, Roger Rosenblatt encourages New York Times readers to snuff Ellis’s book because of its “moronic and sadistic contents,” because it is “so pointless, so themeless, so everythingless,” and because the novel’s main character, Patrick Bateman, “has no motivation for his madness [and] is never brought to justice” (sect. 7, 3). 17 See Kauffman and Price. 18 For an example of the former attitude, see Udovitch, who recognizes the satirical intent of the novel but deems it “profoundly conservative” (65) largely because Ellis “remains an amateurish formalist and a downright lousy stylist” (66) so that he remains incapable of transcending the gore in which his novel dwells. Norman Mailer infamously concurs with this assessment, finding that he “cannot forgive” (!) Ellis for lacking the writerly skills necessary for following through with his satirical intent. 19 Considering that film-making, independent or not, is an enterprise perhaps more closely tied to the culture industry than any other art form, the very location of the discourse surrounding Ellis’s book – major and minor newspapers, magazines, TV shows, etc., all of which are owned by larger corporations that also have stakes in Hollywood’s production, distribution, and advertising machinery – it’s hard to see how it could have been otherwise. 20 Of course, films are subject to rating systems and thus cannot always show what novels can, lest they receive an X rating. (Incidentally, we can 150 abel easily imagine Oliver Stone, who had been interested in directing the film, greatly amplifying the violence and getting away with it!) However, I argue precisely that focusing on the representational quantity of cinematic gore constitutes, in a sense, the problem with much of the cultural criticism of violence. Harron’s film would not necessarily have been more affectively charged had she included more violence. Affect is not a matter of “more.” Thus, we have to ask how and to what effect cinema could render American Psycho’s violence non-representationally, rather than whether more lenient codes would lead to more truthful representations. Can we, for example, imagine a Godardian encounter that does not depend for its affective force on re-presenting Ellis’s violence by trying to push industry limits to their utmost? 21 Harron’s own statements about her motives for tackling Ellis’s novel consistently reveal that her intention was indeed to wrest the text away from its most vitriolic critics and foreground the progressive satirical quality instead of the more sensationalist aspects of the novel. As she writes in the New York Times, she sees the novel as “a surreal satire and although many scenes were excruciatingly violent, it was clearly intended as a critique of male misogyny, not an endorsement of it” (AR 13). 22 In fact, one hardly finds any positive review of the film that does not use the word “satire.” Even the reviews expressing dissatisfaction with the film discuss it in terms of satire. For examples of the former, see Baldwin, Holden, Rothkopf, or Smith; for examples of the latter see Harvey or James. 23 These views are held by, among others, Rosenblatt and Teachout. 24 The first scene has Bateman draw the killing of a prostitute on a tablecloth as he sits across from his fiancée, terminating their relationship over dinner at an upscale restaurant. The second shows his female secretary searching Bateman’s office desk after he placed a rather incoherent and desperate-sounding phone call to her. Eventually, she finds a notebook in which Bateman has drawn a great number of graphic torture scenes. 25 A number of critics have discussed the question of whether the film insinuates that most if not all of the events merely happened in Bateman’s sick imagination. See Harvey, Holden, James, Rayns, and Travers. 151 26 See Difference and Repetition for Deleuze’s most extended philosophical treatment of this issue. 27 Literary theorist Jeffrey Nealon eloquently argues this point: Simply to assume such an “outside” place would be to treat as the object of my discourse that which, in fact, constitutes the very conditions of possibility for discourse in general: a representative metaphysical structure characteristic of the epoch of modern subjectivity that sets up the parameters for what can be said and the ways in which it can be said. The only way to begin speaking about this system, then, is from within. (87) 28 We should note that the book does not really clarify who is speaking in the music chapters. Although we (perhaps correctly) assume that it is Bateman, the matter remains somewhat ambiguous. In any case, it is unclear at what moment, in what form, and to whom the music criticism is narrated. The film, on the other hand, eradicates the narrative breakdown by unambiguously equating the narrative voice with Bateman. Whereas the book configures the question of breakdown – violence – as a question of (dis)embodied voice, the film posits voice – the satirist’s point of view – as an exit, an escape route away from the immoral towards a moral place of judgment. Ellis’s novel configures points of view as an effect of narrative violence; the film presupposes the untarnished existence of one point of view. See Colebrook for an excellent discussion of Deleuze’s take on voice and point of view. 29 Not coincidentally, the novel relentlessly shows us that identity is nothing but a series of masks, whereas the film insists that underneath the (beauty) mask we see Bateman peel off in front of his bathroom mirror, there exists a “true,” stable identity – even if this identity is described as nothingness, as Bateman’s recognition that “There is no real me … I simply am not there.” 30 Differentiating his thought from Foucault’s, Deleuze writes: “I have therefore no need for the status of phenomena of resistance; if the first given of a society is that everything takes flight, then everything in it is deterritorialized” (“Desire and Pleasure” 189). bibliography American Psycho. Dir. Mary Harron. Lion’s Gate, 2000. toward affective criticism Annesley, James. Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture, and the Contemporary American Novel. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. 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